Dishwashers of various types have been proposed wherein items are placed in a wash chamber which is filled and emptied according to desired wash sequences. Recently, dishwasher manufacturers have focused even more on efficiency in implementing new designs. Thus, an amount of electricity, an amount of detergent, and an amount of water used are all monitored in an attempt to provide efficient and environmentally sensitive machines.
Typically, a dishwasher goes through one or more pre-wash cycles to clean food particles, grease, etc. from the items in the dishwasher before detergent is added for cleaning. During a pre-wash cycle, various sprayers in the wash chamber of the dishwasher spray water on the items in the wash chamber to loosen and remove and such debris. After each pre-wash cycle, the water used is typically pumped out of the drain to remove whatever came off the items during the pre-wash cycle. A second pre-wash cycle and sometimes a third pre-wash cycle are then utilized with new water to further remove items before washing starts with detergent.
Each prewash cycle can use up to a gallon of water or more. Therefore, reducing the amount of cycles and/or re-using the water would be desirable. However, reusing the water in current machines would re-introduce the debris removed in a previous pre-wash cycle, thereby defeating the purposes of the pre-wash cycle.
Accordingly, other designs for filtering devices and related dishwashers and methods of operation, including those addressing one or more drawbacks of conventional devices and dishwashers would be welcome.